o keep the unpleasant adventure secret, or conceal from Felicia
that something had been wrong, if she herself had not been so obviously
cherishing a surprise. She had thought that Kirk was waiting at the gate
for Ken, and so had been spared any anxiety on that score. She could
hardly wait for Ken to take off his sweater and wash his hands. Supper
was on the table, and it was to something which lay beside her elder
brother's plate that her dancing eyes kept turning.

Ken, weary with good cause, sat down with a sigh, and then leaned
forward as if an electric button had been touched somewhere about his
person.

"What--well, by Jiminy!" shouted Ken. "I never believed it, never!"

"It's real," Phil said excitedly; "it looks just like a real one."

"_What?_" Kirk asked wildly; "tell me what!"

Ken lifted the crisp new sheet of music and stared at it, and then read
aloud the words on the cover.

"_Fairy Music_," it said--and his name was there, and the Maestro's, and
"_net price, 60c_" "like a real one," indeed. And within were flights
of printed notes, and the words of the "Toad Pome" in cold black and
white. And above them, in small italics, "_Dedicated to Kirkleigh
Sturgis_."

"Just like Beethoven's things to the Countess von Something, don't you
know!" Phil murmured, awed and rapturous.

When Ken laid the pages down at last, Kirk seized on them, and though
they could mean nothing to him but the cool smoothness of paper and the
smell of newly dried printers' ink, he seemed to get an immense
satisfaction from them.

But the surprise was not yet over. Beneath the copy of the song lay a
much smaller bit of paper, long, narrow, and greenish. It bore such
words as _Central Trust Company_, and _Pay to the Order of Kenelm
Sturgis_. The sum which was to be paid him was such as to make Ken put a
hand dramatically to his forehead. He then produced from his pocket the
money which had so nearly gone off in the pocket of the stranger, and
stacked it neatly beside his plate.

"One day's bone labor for man and boat," he said. "Less than a quarter
as much as what I get for fifteen minutes' scribbling."

"And the Maestro says there'll be more," Felicia put in; "because there
are royalties, which I don't understand."

"But," said Ken, pursuing his line of thought, "I can depend on the
_Dutchman_ and my good right arm, and I _can't_ depend on the Pure Flame
of Inspiration, or whatever it's called, so methinks the Sturgis Water